Asustek is trying to further cash in on the huge success of its Eee PC netbook range. It has some very ambitious plans and innovative products up its sleeve. One of those innovations happens to be voice-controlled Eee PCs.

"The first Eee PC or Eee Top products implementing voice-recognition and features will be ready by Q3/Q4 2009 – with our dedicated development team working with third parties in both Japan and the US and reporting directly to me. So this is something we will see very soon, later this year." Shen told Tech Radar.

Asus will have to come up with a truly remarkable voice-recognition technology to even pose a threat to our beloved keyboard.

Though the browsing experience on cellphones has come up by leaps and bounds, a lot of work still needs to be done. Another considerable step forward would be full-fledged Flash functionality on cellphones. It is something that figures high on Adobe’s list of priorities. In fact, it is busy developing Flash ports for major mobile platforms.

Now it appears as though a Flash port for the Android platform may become available sooner than expected as another company is also developing one.

Remember when Stardock outlined its plan to breed a half-DRM, half-helpful hybrid in order to violently obliterate DRM once and for all? We’re a bit foggy on it, to be honest, but we’re pretty sure the press release starred Wesley Snipes.

Well, anyway, the publisher recently unveiled the fruits of its labor, and amazingly, this slow starter just rocketed to the head of the class. Sorry, Steamworks – the second row isn’t so bad.

There is no third-party client required. This means a developer can use this as a universal solution since it is not tied to any particular digital distributor.

It paves the way to letting users validate their game on any digital distribution service that supports that game. One common concern of gamers is if the company they purchased a game from exits the market, their game library may disappear too. Games that use Goo would be able to be validated anywhere.

It opens the door to gamers being able to resell their games because users can voluntarily disable their game access and transfer their license ownership to another user.

True ownership of your game library – as opposed to paying for the right to play your games until their distributor shuts down? We really can’t find anything to complain about here. How about you?

Goo launches on April 7 with Stardock’s Impulse distribution platform’s next release.

After three years of service, ex-Google Visual Design Lead Douglas Bowman parted ways with the search giant last Friday, while also offering some parting thoughts about the company and his decision to move on. His reason for leaving? Not enough creative freedom.

In a blog post, Bowman laments the process of how Google implemented design decisions, saying the company relied too much on data and not enough on subjectivity. He says the reliance on hard numbers ultimately became a crutch that prevented Google from making any daring design decisions.

"Yes, it's true that team at Google couldn't decide between two blues, so they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better," Bowman wrote on his blog. "I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that. I've grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions."

Despite his design philosophy criticism, Bowman says he understands where Google is coming from with billions of shareholder dollars at stake and millions of users around the world to try and please. He also says he has something else lined up, which he'll announce at a later date.

In an attempt to better compete with streaming giant Netflix, Blockbuster this week announced a new deal to begin transmitting movies to TiVo users.

"This relationship with TiVo is step one in getting into the places that consumers care about," says Kevin Lewis, Blockbuster's senior VP for digital.

As part of the deal, Blockbuster will start selling TiVo DVRs in its retail stores later this year. However, neither company was willing to divulge how many of Blockbuster's nearly 4,000 stores will participate. Nor is it known what movies will be available, as "The studios and we are trying to figure it out," Lewis added.

Due to begin in the second half of 2009, Blockbuster's OnDemand will feature content to both buy and rent, and will be integrated into TiVo Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL DVRs, Blockbusters says.

Barring any changes, TiVo owners with Blockbuster accounts will pay up to $4 to rent a movie and then have 30 days to begin watching. Subscribers will then be given a 24-hour window. Alternately, movies will be available for sale at up to $20 a pop, but DRM will prevent subscribers from copying purchased content over to DVD.

Asus, the new champion of the report, didn’t only win the top spot, but they bulldozed Apple with a score of 972 to 324. Also leapfrogging Apple was Lenovo, who took home a score of 348.

Admittedly, Apple does have a larger US market share than Asus (1.6 percent compared to 6.8 percent), but given that Asus was only responsible for 0.2 percent of the service calls placed to RESCUECOM, they do deserve a big pat on the back.

Windows Home Server's latest update, Power Pack 2, is now available via Windows Update, the TechNet Windows Home Server Team Blog reports. WHS users must have Power Pack 1 installed before they can receive Power Pack 2. If you missed Power Pack 1, get it here.

Power Pack 2 fixes a number of irritating bugs left over from Power Pack 1 and the original release, and adds new features. For an overview of what's new in Power Pack 2, join us after the jump.

While Google continues to pull ahead with a healthy share of planetary images, Microsoft announced this week that they signed a deal that gives them access to 100TB worth of NASA’s images, that will ultimately find their way onto the WorldWide Telescope website.

Microsoft has announced that they plan on working with NASA in order to develop “the technology and infrastructure necessary to make the most interesting NASA content.” The content, which will be available on Microsoft’s virtual telescope for exploring the universe, WorldWide Telescope, should be available later this year.

And, for those keeping tabs on just how big 100TB of data is, that’s enough to fill 20,000 DVDs.

You’ve got USB devices, and you’ve got a network. Sure, you can plug those printers, scanners and hard drives into a computer and let that machine share them, or you can use IOGEAR’s new ShareStation and allow anyone using your network access to them!

IOGEAR’s ShareStation comes in two flavors – first up is the four port Net ShareStation that allows anyone with a local connection to the hub access to anything that’s plugged into its ports.

The smaller version of the ShareStation is a two port USB Printer Auto Sharing Switch that’s being described as the “only automatic printer switch compatible with Macs and PCs.”

The four port version will run you $99.95, while the smaller cousin will cost $39.95. Both will be available later this month.

Apple earlier this month began taking orders for its new Mac Pro workstations with Intel's Xeon 3500 and 5500 quad-core processors, so technically, Lenovo isn't the first major PC maker to announce Nehalem-based workstations. Unless, like us, you demand a real PC (oh burn!).

Due for release next week, Lenovo's ThinkStation D20 and S20 workstation will also come configured with Intel's Xeon 3500 and 5500 dual- and quad-core processors. Intel is expected to launch the new CPUs next week as well.

The lower-end S20, which will start out at $1,070, is a single-socket system with support for up to 12GB of memory. The higher-end D20, which will start out at $1,550, comes with two sockets and ups and ante with support for up to 96GB of memory. Both systems will offer up to 1TB of storage.

End-users will be able to choose between Windows Vista Business and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the OS, and an Nvidia Quadro or ATI FirePro workstation videocard for graphics chores.